Holmes said what he could in favor of the project, but my father was clear in the impropriety of it, and at last gave a flat denial to it.

I was conscious of an impropriety in my disputing with a military man in matters of his profession, and said no more.

The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one’s self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos’d to raise one’s reputation in the smallest degree above that of one’s neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project.